Suspects held at police stations would no longer get free legal advice under the proposal, but would be means-tested. Photograph: Chris Young/PA

Kim Evans is a police station representative based at the criminal defence firm Goodall Barnett James. She spends up to two days a week and one in three weekends on call as a duty solicitor advising suspects in custody at Hastings and Eastbourne police stations.

A former detective in the Metropolitan police, Evans has spent 31 years working at the sharp end of the criminal justice system. "I'd guesstimate that 90% of my clients have a personality disorder, mental health issues, and, or, serious substance addiction be it drugs or alcohol," she says.

Evans contacted me following my blog on the controversial, and not consulted upon, clause 12 in the legal aid, sentencing and punishment of offenders bill. This provision scraps the automatic right to a legally aided lawyer to advise suspects in police stations.

The government's plan is to means-test suspects . At the moment, if you are arrested, you are entitled to free advice from a solicitor paid courtesy of the legal aid scheme. Now, the independent Legal Services Commission is being scrapped and ministers are proposing that a civil servant will decide whether or not you can afford your own lawyer.

What does Evans make of the plans? "A lot of my work is done at, four or five in the morning," she says. "You can barely get them to speak to you about what they are there for. They're distressed, off their heads, angry, aggressive. The chances of getting their financial details are slim."

Evans's concern is not the impact of means-testing on her clients, as she thinks most would qualify for legal aid. But she is alarmed that the bill represents a full-blown assault on the Police and Criminal Evidence Act (Pace).

Pace put on to the statute book a universal right to representation by a solicitor at a police station. The legislation was introduced as a response to a succession of miscarriages of justice in the 1970s and 1980s where suspects did not get proper advice in police stations.

A suspect's right to advice cannot be taken for granted. Evans says that when she asks clients why they did not get initial legal advice they routinely say they were told by police that it would "take too long to get one"; they would be interviewed and get out of custody quicker "if they didn't have one".

Evans says: "This is without the police even calling me to see what my response time is – which would be, 99 times out of a 100, within 45 minutes. So the police will now throw into the mix – 'you probably won't qualify for legal aid or won't be able to afford a solicitor'."

The introduction of a means test will hit the middle-classes hardest. Those people who have, as Evans puts it, "more to lose by virtue of mortgages, jobs, status", will be the ones not qualifying for legal aid but unable to afford a lawyer. She also thinks they "in all likelihood, will be totally ill-advised" by the police on the cost of private lawyers' fees.

The pair accuse the government of a collective amnesia over failing to learn the lessons of history that led to the setting up of Pace. CDS Direct provides advice, on the phone, to clients detained at police stations; it covers less serious offences, non-imprisonable offences, and breach of bail.

I mention this because Clause 12 seems to anticipate increasing the jurisdiction of CDS Direct. Ministers claim that the scheme offers "a proven high-quality cost-effective service".

Bridges and Cape suggest that CDS Direct is of "questionable legality", possibly contravening the European convention on human rights. Cape says England and Wales previously "led the world in terms of the right to legal advice at police stations, and in ensuring that it was a real right" but this crucial right has been seriously compromised. Bridges and Cape also argue that the legal profession is far from blameless, especially in its use of non-qualified staff to do the police station work.

Cape believes the government has still to publish research on how CDS Direct fulfils its Pace obligations. As he sees it, a big problem is that the police do not contact lawyers directly but go through a call centre; when the lawyer tries to contact the station "the police frequently do not answer the telephone, delaying access to a lawyer and driving up cost". All that time is absorbed into the lawyer's fixed fee (£160 for an entire case, and until recently the charge per hour was about £70). If this is extended to more serious offences, it will be "a system set up to fail, and will have knock-on costs for the police", Cape says.

The academics see an irony in the UK contemplating scrapping a vital safeguard while, in the same month, the EU publishes a proposed directive on the right to legal advice and representation at police stations. Many might hope that the fog of "collective amnesia" lifts and clause 12 is binned.

Jon Robins is a freelance journalist and director of the research company Jures, which is running the Justice Gap series looking at different aspects of justice